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| Spring 2006 | Volume 80 | Issue 1 |
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Article Abstracts
"Diverging Paths: Accounting for Corporate Governance in America and Germany"
American and German accountancy took different paths in the early part of the twentieth century. In Germany, a persistent disconnect arose between relatively sophisticated managerial accounting practices for insiders and the methods used in public financial accounting. The "equity revolution" America experienced--an enormous shift in the number and expectations of shareholders--prompted new demands for financial statements designed to help evaluate the future earning power of companies. In contrast, the effects of World War I retarded equity-market development in Germany. Political frictions reinforced the Germans' discomfort with equity markets and increased their resistance to revising accounting principles. Banks, tax law, courts, and lawyers, instead of professional accountants, became the primary source of accounting principles. Only in past decades, under pressure from the European Union and global capital markets, have the accounting systems begun to reconverge. "Container Shipping and the Decline of New York, 1955-1975"
The introduction of container shipping in the late 1950s and early 1960s has received little attention from historians, but it represents a major technological advance with significant economic consequences. By dramatically lowering the cost of freight handling, the container reduced the need for factories to be near suppliers and markets and opened the way for manufacturing to move out of urban centers, first domestically and then abroad. This impact was particularly intense in New York City, where the container revolution began. Containerization had a devastating impact on New York City's economy and was a major contributor to the collapse of its industrial base between 1967 and 1975. "The Making of a Music Multinational:
PolyGram's International Businesses, 1945-1998"
In half a century PolyGram expanded from two small Dutch and German companies to become the world's largest music multinational. It did so in the midst of a fast-changing business environment, in which relatively homogenous products and tastes gave way to differentiated outputs for segmented markets. Making use of strengths inherited from its owners Philips and Siemens, PolyGram integrated a continuous series of foreign acquisitions into one international organization while maintaining the creative identities and independence of the firms it acquired. To control and manage the resulting idiosyncratic configuration, it developed the federated form, a decentralized organizational structure that fit the shifting environment. PolyGram became what can be defined as a rights-based multinational, and its structure showed similarities to multinationals in other rights-based industries. |
Book Reviews
*Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view the book reviews. If you cannot open the files,
download Adobe Acrobat here for free! Atlantic History: Concept and Contours. By Bernard Bailyn. Reviewed by Peter A. Coclanis. Bananas and Business: The United Fruit Company in Colombia, 1899–2000. By Marcelo Bucheli. Reviewed by María Inés Barbero. Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History. Edited by Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and Bruce Mazlish. Reviewed by Leslie Hannah. Water Frontier: Commerce and the Chinese in the Lower Mekong Region, 1750–1880. Edited by Nola Cooke and Tana Li. Reviewed by Wei Leng Loh. Herbert A. Simon: The Bounds of Reason in Modern America. By Hunter Crowther-Heyck. Reviewed by Mary O. Furner. European Integration, 1950–2003: Superstate or New Market Economy? By John Gillingham, Reviewed by Bruce Kogut. Die deutsche Textilindustrie zwischen 1933 und 1939: Staatsinterventionismus und ökonomische Rationalität [The German textile industry between 1933 and 1939: Government intervention and economic rationality]. By Gerd Höschle. Reviewed by Jonas Scherner. A Nation of Realtors: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle Class. By Jeffrey M. Hornstein. Reviewed by Merry Ovnick. The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars, and the Legacy. By Charles K. Hyde. Reviewed by James M. Rubenstein. Industrielle Revolution in Deutschland: Regionen als Wachstumsmotoren [Industrial revolution in Germany: Regions as motors of growth]. By Hubert Kiesewetter. Reviewed by Frank B. Tipton. Manufacturing Suburbs: Building Work and Home on the Metropolitan Fringe. Edited by Robert Lewis. Reviewed by Andrew Wiese. Asbestos and Fire: Technological Trade-offs and the Body at Risk. By Rachel Maines. Reviewed by Dalit Baranoff. Yankee Don't Go Home! Mexican Nationalism, American Business Culture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920–1950. By Julio Moreno. Reviewed by Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato. Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850–1930. By Richard J. Orsi. Reviewed by Don L. Hofsommer. A New Economic History of Argentina. Edited by Gerardo della Paolera and Alan M. Taylor. Reviewed by Vera Blinn Reber. Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945. By Bernhard Rieger. Reviewed by Michael Thad Allen. The Creation of the British Atlantic World. Edited by Carole Shammas and Elizabeth Mancke. Reviewed by Matthew Mulcahy. Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915. By Eric Tagliacozzo. Reviewed by Priscilla Roberts. General Motors and the Nazis: The Struggle for Control of Opel, Europe's Biggest Carmaker. By Henry Ashby Turner Jr. Reviewed by S. Jonathan Wiesen. Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America. By Zaragosa Vargas. Reviewed by Clete Daniel. Courage and Change: The Life of Kiichiro Toyoda. By Kazuo Wada and Tsunehiko Yui, translated by Edmund R. Skrzypcak. Reviewed by David Farber. Die institutionelle Revolution: Eine Einführung in die deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte des 19 und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts [The institutional revolution: An introduction to German economic history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries]. By Clemens Wischermann and Anne Nieberding. Reviewed by Werner Plumpe. A Political Explanation of Economic Growth: State Survival, Bureaucratic Politics, and Private Enterprises in the Making of Taiwan's Economy, 1950–1985. By Yongping Wu. Reviewed by J. Megan Greene. |